Constant battle with this truck. I've had enough and its going up for sale but I must get it running decent before I let her go!
My alternator went dead on me 2 weeks ago. I had it checked by the local Advanced Auto parts store and they said its no good...so I bought a new one which I come to find out didn't have the right size pulley on it so I had to go back to the store and swap the old one off mine to this new one.
Put it on the truck and now it does not charge the batteries at all just like the old one. Now im sure I don't have something hooked up correctly as there is a external regulator of some sort that is attached via electrical tape to the one that's on the alternator wires. It in addition has 5 brown wires coming out of it. I hooked them up to the best of what I can remember all but one wire is hooked up. This wire is one that the last owner had run underneath the back of the housing and soldered to something under there. I didn't pay enough attention to that and just cut that wire when I removed the old alternator.
After a week of driving the truck and having to put it on the battery charger every night so I can drive it to work the next day that has gotten old not to mention thismorning it won't even start. When I turn the key it just shoots sparks out from the battery terminals and makes a couple violant buzzing/clicking noises and then does absolutly nothing. After it has this fits of clicking & buzzing along with the pops of sparks it won't make that noise again for roughly 30 minutes. When I mean 30 minutes if you turn the key it will do nothing. But it you let it sit for 30 minutes and turn the key again to start the truck it will do the popping and clicking again. Still no start not even one rotation of the engine.
What can this be? one day it starts and the next it won't even crank? This has happened before then all the sudden started and ran fine for a couple days then does this again.